Guest Opinions

The Vallejo area has its share of sunken ship stories, including a Navy destroyer rusting away in Napa River mud north of town and the submerged hulk of a massive ferryboat, once used to haul entire trains, to the south in Carquinez Strait.

WASHINGTON — What would it take for Republicans to turn against Donald Trump? Now, finally, we know. For nearly three years, Republican lawmakers have stood with Trump, offering only isolated protest, through all manner of outrage.

WASHINGTON — Whom the gods would destroy, they first make toil for Donald Trump. Jeff Sessions had been a four-term U.S. senator, had served as the top Republican on important committees and had a strong following among hardcore conservatives.

In case you missed this news nugget, Mike Jeffcoat, the coach at Texas Wesleyan University, has been fired after saying in an email to a Colorado high school prospect that the university no longer recruits players from the state due to failed drug tests.

WASHINGTON — The ceaseless barrage of news — both real and fake — from the Trump administration can be numbing, so it’s important to step back every once in a while and look at the big picture: Never have we seen such utter chaos and blatant corruption.

William Cody, American frontiersman-turned-showman, had achieved worldwide fame and was the subject of countless dime novels and newspaper puff pieces when he brought his thrilling “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West” to Vallejo in 1902.

WASHINGTON — For a brief but glorious moment, we had Hope. On Tuesday, White House communications director Hope Hicks did what for the Trump White House was extraordinary, if not unprecedented: She admitted to lawmakers that working for President Trump required her to lie.

The worst social problem in America today could well be fatherless homes. While there are myriad exceptions, and while fathers in the home can be negligent or actively harmful, the statistics are overwhelming about how children can get cheated out of decent lives by their absence.

When it comes to guns, it often appears as though liberals and conservatives are speaking different languages. Liberals express their horror at each new mass shooting and demand government action, while conservatives call for “thoughts and prayers” and insist on respect for the Second Amendment.

Never underestimate the partisanship that flows from even the most tragic of circumstances. The deadly shooting in Parkland, Florida, that claimed the lives of 17 people immediately became a hotbed of fingerpointing.

WASHINGTON — Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s indictment of 13 Russians over their alleged efforts to elect Donald Trump set off a presidential paroxysm of self-exoneration. “The results of the election were not impacted.

WASHINGTON — President Trump is a force of nature. Actually, he is a full-blown meteorological phenomenon. This week, what in any other presidency would have been a Category 5 hurricane made landfall at the White House.

genoans@hotmail.com Efforts to extend the shorelines of Mare Island and Vallejo — narrowing the Napa River channel between them — date to the earliest days of the city and the Navy’s first West Coast shipyard.

WASHINGTON — It was a profoundly poignant image: Thirty to 40 teens huddled together in a small dark room, their downturned faces illuminated by cellphones as they learned about an active shooter prowling their school.

WASHINGTON — Don’t tell me the issue is mental health. Save the nonsense about “good guys” with weapons somehow being the answer. The truth is this: There would have been no tragic shooting Wednesday in Parkland, Florida, if a troubled young man had not gotten his hands on a military-style assault rifle and as much ammunition as he wanted.

A lot of voters who normally vote Republican, or at least consider voting Republican, have a strong aversion to the direction of the Republican Party under President Donald Trump. What should they do in the next few elections? A lot of intriguing answers have recently emerged — some involving a boycott of the GOP, or commissions, or new laws.

I didn’t fully appreciate the importance of this year’s California race for governor until my conversation Wednesday with Stanford political science Professor Bruce Cain. My focus had been on the critical decision of who would best drive the state’s future.

WASHINGTON — Well, of course the president who claimed bone spurs to dodge the Vietnam War wants the biggest, bestest military parade ever, with lots of tanks and rockets and flags — zillions of flags — and fighter jets screaming overhead.

It is increasingly clear that President Donald Trump and the Republicans are engaging in a campaign to smear and discredit special prosecutor Robert Mueller. All of this is an effort to undermine an investigation into whether serious federal crimes occurred that potentially implicate individuals at the highest levels of the government, including Trump and members of his family.

WASHINGTON — When White House staff secretary Rob Porter resigned Wednesday amid allegations that he abused his two ex-wives and a former girlfriend, he parted the curtains on a Trumpian-scale personnel and security disaster.

WASHINGTON — President Trump, in his State of the Union address last week, boasted to the nation about stock market gains: “The stock market has smashed one record after another, gaining $8 trillion and more in value in just this short period of time.

The news is filled with reports that Republicans in Washington are “attacking” the FBI over the Trump-Russia investigation. The Washington Post recently compiled a collection of statements by GOP lawmakers under the heading, “Republicans launch attack after attack on the FBI.

WASHINGTON — For the sake of argument, let’s take President Trump and his Fox News cheerleaders at their word that they really believe that the memo Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., released Friday reveals a serious assault on our freedoms by the FBI and the Justice Department.

WASHINGTON — Just minutes before the start of President Trump’s State of the Union address, Hillary Clinton dumped a mea culpa onto her Facebook page, explaining why, a decade earlier, she hadn’t fired a campaign staffer accused of sexual harassment.

Mika Brzezinski is right now looking good, even if she did not come out so well in a recent “Saturday Night Live” sketch that poked satirical fun at her as more a mindless toady than a journalist while portraying her partner, Joe Scarborough, as self-absorbed.

The Navy built more than 500 vessels on Mare Island over the years, but it wasn’t the only shipyard on the Mare Island Strait. Several shipyards flourished in the late 1800s and early 1900s on the Vallejo side of the river, including one that built a Navy warship, the USS Monadnock.

WASHINGTON — Presidents don’t win fights with the FBI. Donald Trump apparently wants to learn this lesson the hard way. Most presidents have had the sense not to bully the FBI by defaming its leaders and — ridiculously — painting its agents as leftist political hacks.

WASHINGTON — It gives me no pleasure to say this, but the Democrats’ behavior at the State of the Union was embarrassing. I take a back seat to nobody in decrying President Trump’s cynical and divisive performance.

The State of the Union is strong. I mean, President Trump didn’t trip and tumble off the platform in a real life homage to Chevy Chase, or press a red Staples button on the podium and announced that he’d just launched a fleet of cruise missiles toward North Korea, or order special counsel Robert Mueller led into the House of Representatives blindfolded and in handcuffs, or gaze out toward Melania and ask for a divorce (since the state of his union is reportedly weak).

WASHINGTON — It was a good speech. Calm down. I said good. Despite talking for an hour and 20 minutes, the longest speech since Bill Clinton’s much-mocked 2000 stem-winder, Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address did exactly what it needed to do: nothing.

WASHINGTON — On Tuesday night, the president will read a speech somebody else wrote for him. The pundits will say he sounds presidential. And on Wednesday, Donald Trump will go back to being Donald Trump.

WASHINGTON — It began, as these things generally do, with Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-Benghazi. The voluble congressman, who speaks as if he is arguing the trial of the century even if he is ordering breakfast, went on Fox News on Tuesday to divulge a secret.

WASHINGTON — Wait, back up a minute. We just zoomed past a story that would have been a five-alarm scandal for any other administration, with weeks of screaming front-page headlines: “The President and the Porn Star.

If the recent brief government shutdown accomplished nothing else, it sent Donald Trump into hiding for three days, no small blessing. Somebody convinced him that golfing in Florida would look bad, and his minders didn’t trust him to do any actual negotiating, so the president holed up in the White House watching TV and yakking on the phone.

WASHINGTON — Conspiracies. Secret societies. Witch hunts. During the past year, we’ve heard reference to all of the above to explain away any suggestion of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 presidential election.

WASHINGTON — As hundreds of thousands of women took to the streets on Saturday to vent their discontent with President Trump’s first year in office, the president, who is supported by just 29 percent of women, did what he does best.

The start of President Trump’s second year in office has given Republicans and conservatives an opportunity to review a solid list of achievements: corporate and individual tax cuts; economic growth; wage growth; a conservative Supreme Court justice; a record number of circuit court confirmations; deregulation; the defeat of ISIS and more.

WASHINGTON — It was probably only a matter of time before some unbalanced person decided that he needed to take out a few members of the “fake news” media. And it was inevitable that his actions — in this case, his threats — would be placed at the feet of Donald Trump, who has spent a considerable amount of time and energy demonizing the media.

WASHINGTON — If the name Taylor Weyeneth rings a tiny bell in your head, then you might be related to him. Otherwise, the 24-year-old was until a week ago an unknown if powerful member of the Trump administration: Deputy chief of staff in the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

genoans@hotmail.com Looking into the history of a street name often produces a story worth retelling. In our area, one of the best examples is Waterman Boulevard in Fairfield, named after a sea captain who set clipper ship speed records but faced a lynch mob that wanted him hanged for brutalizing his crew.

As Donald Trump marks his first year in office, this question is more critical and consequential than ever: How should the media be covering the president? There’s no doubt that Trump has changed the rules of the game.